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A Widow for One Year QUOTES

A Widow for One Year QUOTES

1 " You can't learn everything you need to know legally. "

― John Irving , A Widow for One Year

2 " It galls me that seeking out the seedy, the sordid, the sexual, and the deviant is the expected (if not altogether acceptable) behavior of male writers; it would surely benefit me, as a writer, if I had the courage to seek out more of the seedy, the sordid, the sexual, and the deviant myself. But women who seek out such things are made to feel ashamed, or else they sound stridently ridiculous in defending themselves -- as if they're bragging. ... Yet there are subjects that remain off-limits for women writers. It's not unlike that dichotomy which exists regarding one's sexual past: it is permissible, even attractive, for a man to have had one, but if a woman has had a sexual past, she'd better keep quiet about it. "

― John Irving , A Widow for One Year

3 " If you're a writer, the problem is that, when you try to call a halt to thinking about your novel-in-progress, your imagination still keeps going; you can't shut it off. "

― John Irving , A Widow for One Year

4 " In Ruth's view, they looked 'like a couple' because they seemed to possess some terrible secret between them - they appeared stricken with remorse when they saw her. Only a novelist could ever imagine such nonsense. (In part, it was because of her perverse ability to imagine anything that in this instance Ruth failed to imagine the obvious) "

― John Irving , A Widow for One Year

5 " Because who can describe the look that triggers the memory of loved ones? Who can anticipate the frown, the smile, or the misplaced lock of hair that sends a swift, undeniable signal from the past? Who can ever estimate the power of association, which is always strongest in moments of love and in memories of death? "

― John Irving , A Widow for One Year

6 " Here was the world-famous novelist with her penchant for detail; yet, in her observations of a prostitute with a customer, she had failed to come away with the most important detail of all. She could never identify the murderer; she could barely describe him. She'd made a point of not looking at him! "

― John Irving , A Widow for One Year

7 " A novel is always more complicated than it seems at the beginning. Indeed a novel should be more complicated than it seems at the beginning. "

― John Irving , A Widow for One Year

8 " Of course, if I write a first-person novel about a woman writer, I am inviting every book reviewer to apply the autobiographical label -- to conclude that I am writing about myself. But one must never not write a certain kind of novel out of fear of what the reaction to it will be. "

― John Irving , A Widow for One Year

9 " And maybe it was fair; if a book was any good, it was a slap in the face to someone. "

― John Irving , A Widow for One Year

10 " Ruth knew very well what the killer thought he had heard: he'd heard the sound of someone trying not to make a sound - that's what he'd heard. "

― John Irving , A Widow for One Year

11 " Novels were not arguments; a story worked, or it didn't, on its own merits. What did it matter if a detail was real or imagined? What mattered was that the detail seemed real, and that it was absolutely the best detail for the circumstance. That wasn't much of a theory, but it was all Ruth could truly commit herself to at the moment. It was time to retire that old lecture, and her penance was to endure the compliments of her former credo. "

― John Irving , A Widow for One Year

12 " She asserted that the best fictional detail was a chosen detail, not a remembered one - for fictional truth was not only the truth of observation, which was the truth of mere journalism. The best fictional detail was the detail that should have defined the character or the episode or the atmosphere. Fictional truth was what should have happened in a story - not necessarily what did happen or what had happened. "

― John Irving , A Widow for One Year

13 " There are moments when time does stop. We must be alert enough to notice such moments. "

― John Irving , A Widow for One Year

14 " What bothered Ruth was that she needed to be with Rooie again -- just to see, as in a story, what would happen next. That meant Rooie was in charge. "

― John Irving , A Widow for One Year

15 " One can’t blame Marion for telling Eddie all the times of the day and the week she avoided. For instance, when children got out of school—not to mention all museums, all zoos. And parks in any decent weather, when the children would be sure to be there with their nannies or their parents; and every daytime baseball game—all Christmas shopping, too. What had she left out? All summer and winter resorts, the first warm days of the spring, the last warm days of the fall—and every Halloween, of course. And on her list of things never to do: she never went out for breakfast, she gave up ice cream . . . Marion was always the well-dressed woman alone in a restaurant—she would ask for a table at the latest time they served. She ordered her wine by the glass and ate her meals with a novel. "

― John Irving , A Widow for One Year

16 " From that moment on, he would never stop seeing her, not in his minds eye - not whenever he closed his eyes and tried to sleep. She would always be there. "

― John Irving , A Widow for One Year

17 " …the consequences of sex are often more memorable than the act itself. "

― John Irving , A Widow for One Year

18 " All his life he would hold this moment as exemplary of what love was. It was not wanting anything more, nor was it expecting people to exceed what they had just accomplished; it was simply feeling so complete. "

― John Irving , A Widow for One Year

19 " …there is no nakedness that compares to being naked in front of someone for the first time. "

― John Irving , A Widow for One Year

20 " What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life - to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting? "

― John Irving , A Widow for One Year